Responding to David Arnett’s June 13 letter, “Fill last days of school with tutelage,” I’m wondering where he got his information. As usual, when generalizations are made, they are often unfair and/or inaccurate. I’m a paraeducator (staff assistant) at Discovery Middle School and I can tell you of specific classroom activities.
In the two math classes I help, the students continued their lessons and prepared for their final. The algebra teacher told me that, since her students’ three days of exams were over, she was going to show them a bit of what’s to come in their trigonometry class next year. Life science students classified native and non-native organisms on campus and prepared a field guild for their final project. Physical science students designed and measured flight times of compression rockets.
I would also challenge Arnett to take the 14-question essay and short answer final about the civil rights movement on which some seventh-grade students were tested in their English class.
Needless to say, I disagree strongly that the schools are committing fraud by not providing meaningful instruction the last week of school. The students at Discovery were hard at work, engaged in well-planned lessons.
